1. RE: Is Euphoria a Hobby language?
sixs wrote:
>
>
> I hve read many of the emails that seem to be against RDS and the
> status of the language. I have written many years in COBOL, Basic, and
> languages before COBOL, as well as so called 4th Generation Languages.
> Lots of GOTOs. I have written in Delphia and Visual Basic. What I want
> to know is what is a hobby language.?
> I looked at LUA,REBOL, Ruby, and CAml as well as some others. I thought
> Euphoria was the best pick. Was I wrong?
> Jim
>
This is a good topic. I can't resist.
Foremost, it all depends on perspective, and the task.
This is what I think to be a professional language, and why Eu is not.
It's not the language itself that really determines if it is a hobby
language, or if it's capable of doing professional tasks.
As euphoria is now, it's quite capable of producing very professional
software.
First note, that Euphoria is strictly speaking, a commercial product,
not opensource. It is shareware. Opensource is a different realm, and
different rules apply, as everybody can do what they need to, and
contribute. The life of opensource is insured by being public and
popular.
It's the scale of the tasks you can accomplish with it.
Eu remains to be fit for small tasks, and prototyping. Large projects
exceed Euphoria's ability, mostly do to lack of support, in the form of
quality, standardized resources, and some of the more or less slight
limitations of Eu and it's (IMO) design flaws.
There are quite a number of factors that I see contributing to this
situation. Here is a sammary of what I think affects Eu's commercial
ability.
Because eu is not opensource, we cannot directly control the aspects
below.
There are several points here:
1.Staff
RDS, I should say Robert Craig, is not capable of maintaining the 4
points below to allow euphoria to adequately grow into a viable,
professional tool, by himself.
2.Support
This includes standardization of common API's,
a professional distribution (installer, proper dev tools...),
availability of _quality_ online resources, code, docs, etc..
3.Progress
Euphoria is stagnant. It is updated once a year, with next to 0
consultation with its customers, and the changes are generally
very minor.
Euphoria still ships with ed.ex as the provided editor for coding.
4.Management
On the business end of things, I do not beleive that RDS has the
desire for Eu to be as big as it needs to be.
On the project side of things, Rob does everything by himself, and
seems to prefer it that way. One man cannot meet the demand
required for a professionally viable language.
5.Popularity
Without purpose, there is no reason for RDS to meet the demands
of users who will use Eu no matter what is done to it, because
they just like programming (hobbyists).
Without voice, we have no influence.
Without diversity and activity, problems are solved slowly, and
often poorly.
Without meeting points 1 to 4 above, #5 is not possible.
Each point is relevant to each other, and they all rest in RDS's
control.
Chris Bensler
Code is Alchemy
2. RE: Is Euphoria a Hobby language?
I'm not new to programming. I started in 1960. I have programmed IBM 1401,
/360, /370, and others using FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, Pascal, PL/I, APL, C,
C++, Java, Assembly, and OS's like VM/370, MVS, Cromix, Xenix, Unix,
Solaris, AIX, Linux, etc. So I have a good base to compare EU to other
languges.
I use Euphoria. EU is good for any task. I now also program and teach C /
C++.
I only revert to C when EU is too slow for the job.
Programs in EU are much, much easier to develop and debug than the same in
C.
C is actually machine language made independed of the hardware. It routinely
deals with memory addresses (pointers), it does not check integer overflow,
it does not check indexes within range, etc. That's the same as Assembly
language.
C also has structures, unions, char, short, int, long, signed/unsigned,
float, double and long double types. But I don't see them as advantages.
They represent complexity, and are useful only to gain some efficiency. If
speed and RAM usage is not a problem, you should use EU, not C.
C++ is another story. It is really a hybrid. C++ classes add great
complexity to programming. Of course, if some other had developped a class,
you can use it to advantage. But developing a good class is a pain in the
neck. And, anyway, you have similar facilities in EU by including libraries.
Did you ever try to use Win APIs in C / C++? win32lib was developed by
euphorians. Did you think why it was?
Regards.
----- Original Message -----
From: Alexander Toresson <guest at RapidEuphoria.com>
To: <EUforum at topica.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 6:23 PM
Subject: Re: Is Euphoria a Hobby language?
>
>
> posted by: Alexander Toresson <toressonodakra at swipnet.se>
>
> Igor Kachan wrote:
> >
> > Patrick Barnes wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:34:28 +1000, spent memory <spent.memory at
gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > i don't think it's what we can do i think it's what rob can do, i
know
> > > > this may sound stupid but if you consider that he looks at it from a
> > > > marketing perspective then his intention would prolly be to go for
as
> > > > many markets as possible, newbies, intermediate and advanced :)
> > >
> > > Exactly!
> > >
> > > So he should be noticing that these advanced users are leaving, and
> > > try and address the issues.
> >
> > Are you sure they are leaving Euphoria itself, but not this list only?
> > I think, there is some latent using of Euphoria now, say, for
competition
> > at work or such.
> >
> > This list is about 500 members, some of them do not talking about any
> > things at all.
>
> If this list really has 500 members, 90% doesn't post. And I don't think
> that most of them are just reading what others post. Most of them are
> probably *inactive*. Anyway, where did you get that count from?
>
> > There are about 30000 downloaders of PD Euphoria 2.3 and 2.4 on
> > download.com.
>
> 50% didn't understand what it was or how to use it. 50% of those who did
> understand what it was didn't like it. That leaves 7500. That's not much
> for a programming language which has been around for over ten years,
> even if everybody who downloaded it actually uses it.
>
> > I had written some custom program on 35000 or so Euphoria operators in
v2.1
> > PD Euphoria with 300 operators limit(!!!). That program was translated
> > by hands from QB4.5 and had many powerful Euphoria improvements,
> > impossible in QB4.5, PDS7.1. VB1.
> > It was not a Hobby program.
> > It was just impossible on MS professional expensive products.
> > MS products have nothing to do on Linux, not only on DOS32.
>
> You're comparing euphoria to shit. Compare Euphoria with the usability of
> c++, vb.net etc, and you'll a completely different picture. Euphoria needs
> to *develop* to compete with those languages, and I don't mean 1 update/
> year with a few new features and/or features moved from the complete
> to the free edition.
>
> > Do ever one person of this list know about my programs before 2001?
>
> No, we don't, though I don't understand how it would make any difference
> knowing about them.
>
> > Now new v.2.5 PD has NO limitations at all, and just sturtup microdelay
> > for the compiled by the best Open Watcom C compiler Euphoria program.
>
> I do not care about the free version of euphoria. I own the complete
> edition. The complete edition is what should be used when comparing.
>
> *Startup microdelay*? Do you own a supercomputer?
>
> > But this list has some new members now, who wants to teach RDS
> > and Rob Craig how to program Euphoria itself.
> >
> > Ok, what a problem, teach, download PD Source Code and teach.
> > Rob is ready listen to you about *you concrete code*.
> >
> > Do not want to teach?
> > Ok, learn how to make the World famous things.
>
> We don't want to teach him to program in Euphoria. We want to show him
> what features should be adequate in Euphoria. Euphoria seriously needs
> some features to be a language that more experienced programmers also
> can use.
>
> Here's a list of improvements in eu that would be needed, which
> Patrick Barnes posted today:
>
> >> How could limited options slow things down? I like how somebody else
put
> >> it... With Euphoria, I stop worrying about syntax and can concentrate
on
> >> the algorithm.
> >
> >Well, implement a program that uses threads.
> >Or can load plugins dynamically, and call functions within those plugins.
> >Or break out of multiple levels of loop without slowdown.
> >Or make sure a large data array doesn't contain any illegal values.
> >Or manage the namespaces properly for a large project that includes
> >many 3rd party libs.
>
>
> > So, if you want to be constructive, you have all ways to be
constructive.
>
> We have been constructive all the time, but he just doesn't listen to us.
>
> > But if you are waiting that programming itself is simple thing,
> > this is your mistake, sorry.
> > Programming itself never was and is not and never will be simple.
> > Euphoria programming language is just one of the simplest among
> > other programing languages. But more powerful than most of them.
>
> Who said it is easy?
>
> > > Funny thing is though, that most of these advanced users have already
> > > paid for the language before finding out it's shortcomings, so I'm not
> > > sure that it hurts his bottom line any to ignore them.
> >
> > Nothing strange or funny, I think.
> > If you wanted just $-feature, but know now that there is some extremly
> > powerful
> > Euphoria IL-engine too, you want this engine too and for free.
> >
> > Euphoria is for End Users, who wants a simple, robust and powerful
> > language.
> > And Euphoria is a simple, robust and powerful language.
> > Shoot me boys, it is truth.
> > And do not mix and confuse market questions with programming questions.
> >
>
> You do really just repeat what was told you by the documentation.
> And you didn't comment what he said, you just added talk of no
> importance. Why are most advanced users leaving euphoria?
>
> /Lex
>
> Shhh! Be vewy quiet! I'm hunting wuntime ewwows!
>
>
>
>
